UCSD Divestment Proposal Shot Down

UC San Diego campus group Students for Justice in Palestine was unsuccessful for a fourth straight year in its bid to request the University of California divest itself of any holdings in General Electric and Northrop Grumman. The group has requested the UC system refrain from investment in the companies due to their manufacture of helicopter parts used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Last year, we were so close to getting something passed, but a few members of the opposition opposed [the proposal] and so it was scrapped,” Students for Justice member Fred Qafiti told university paper The Guardian last month when introducing the resolution to the UC San Diego Associated Students Council.

In the past two years, similar resolutions were tabled without the council taking an official stance. This year, however, the proposal came to a vote and was defeated. UC San Diego becomes the second school in the UC system to have blocked such a proposal; a resolution similar to it actually passed in 2010 at UC Berkeley, but without sufficient support to override the veto of then-AS president Will Smelko, making that school the first to shoot down the idea.

“The resolution does not foster a more cohesive campus community, but rather further polarizes the already-marginalized set of pro-Israel groups on campus,” wrote Tritons for Israel president Daniel Friedman in an opposition editorial published in the Guardian, noting that only Israel was targeted by the proposal despite the companies in question holding military contracts with numerous countries.